The Hive evolves....

Meiotic Spores to you and me.....a while ago, while building my 'Nidzilla army, I bought 6 Carnifexes from Gaming Figures, with their discount and great service I was encouraged to go the whole hog! After constructing said monsters I was left with a vast amount of spares! What to do with them, well we're blessed in the GoG's with guys that have a phenomenal amount of talent, one even lends his hand to making models from scratch!
So over to Eddie they went, I thought no more of it. Recently Eddie posted his creation of the Tervigon using various bits from said collection, so they are all going to great use.
You can imagine my surprise when out of the blue he turns up with this superb looking model....he offered that he was grateful for all the bits and that this was a thank you...well Eddie THANK YOU!
It's magnificent!

It's detailed in Forgeworlds Imperial Armour Volume IV "The Anphelion Project" a great book as ever. It covers a lot of Tyranids bio gribblies and a new chapter for Space Marines "The Red Scorpions as well as the Imperial Guard Regiment the "Elysian Drop Troops".
Basically it's a fast attack choice that has two altitudes for movement and deployment and delivers a huge payload of Bio-acid St 5 AP3 large blast, it also gives 2D6 + 5 against armour....ouch!

A great addition to my revitalised 'Nid army, just need to look at the new codex and work on the rest, my poor 'Nidzilla army is far too expensive as it stands for a 1500 pts army, still....from what I read, there is a host of other options to take now, time to dust off the rest of my 'stealers me thinks!!



Well this is another project, that must go on the list, I need to finish my Chaos Terminators first, nearly there, just touches to the bases and I'm done. Just 1 more Obliterator and a 10 man squad of Raptors including Lightning Claws and 2 Meltaguns........fwaaaaaooooooor!

TTFN

BFG.

The Reich prepares to take the brunt!

After reading an article in Wargames Illustrated (W.I.), I began painting my Armour....why wait, well I didn't have the confidence to go ahead with it frankly. This was probably one of the sole projects that I have started from scratch in a very long time and I wanted to get it right!
When you look at all the nicely painted stuff in the various books for Flames of War, well you want your stuff to look as good as that right!
The article in W.I. determined what sort of gamer are you, more gaming than painting or vice-versa, well I definitely fir the former category! As a result I didn't wait to master the spray gun in order to get my look right, I went with a hand painted effort.

The results are here, I hope this gives you some insight and encouragement if you were suffering the same hang ups as me.
I have now completed my first SD KFZ 251/1 hanomags for my Gepanzerte Panzergrenadier Platoon, to support my Armour Company.


The PZ IV platoon was also finished, well the decals need to go on, which will be done in the next day or so.
I thought the Armour was a good way to go initially as the "Attacker" stance generally suits my natural way of playing. I also have 4 StuG -G's complated so this gives me two platoons with an HQ of 2 PZIV's and a Platoon of 3 PZ IV's, thus completing the Companies basic requirements.


I wanted to get some decent Recce into the comapny asap, so chose the illustrious PZII -Luchs. I just like the general look of these little tanks and am hoping,(in my inexperience) that being in a tank may lend me a prolonged life expectancy on the table top.

I have additional Support in the shape of Air Support, Ju87G Stuka squadron, a PAK 40 platoon and a Tiger I. The Stukas need painting though! Watch this space. In the pipeline I have the box set Panzer Kannonen(due to my W.I. subscription, thanks Silverback ;-) a wrothy investment), these have a Panther and a StuG G in them which if I add another Panther, could give me a basic company of:

2 Panther HQ, 5 PZ IV Combat platoon, 5 StuG-G platoon plus support. Could be fun!

Well until then.....TTFN!

B.F.G.

SotTR: New Stuff

The Silverback is not the only one working on his SotTR stuff at the moment. I've got 20+ Zombies done. 20 German troopers done with 2 Hanomags that were finished at the weekend. One Vampire and 3 Werewolves are also waiting to draw blood on the battlefield!

Went for a Winter Camo for the Germans rather than the drab military grey. Thought I'd try to make them a bit more interesting.

Still to go:

15 German troopers

6 German Drop Troopers

1 Tiger Mecha! Oh yeah baby! Tiger Mecha - read it and weep!

Chaos - Revisited!!

Right, as you may or may not be aware I was not very happy with the way my Nurgle vehicles came out of my painting process.  They are, in my opinion so far below my usual standard to be an embarrassment.  So I have started to re-do them.

I had undercoated them with Army Painter Army Green and then Badab Black washed them.  I used too much wash and was not careful enough; better to say I was not mindful of the end result.  So I ended up with pools of wash and brush strokes in the finish.  Either way, this had to change.

So I brush painted Olive Drab from Coat D'Arms over the top of the paintwork being careful not to go over the washed finish were I liked it.  I then went to the wires for inspiration and a challenge.  In a bizarre self flagellent moment, I realised I had become comfortable in my painting and wanted a challenge.  My memory sparked and I recalled some nice chaos imagery and a 'How to' guide on BolS.  So off I went.  This directed to this site http://davetaylorminiatures.blogspot.com/ where I read more on the painting guide.  I then found this little diamond of a PDF to educate me on the weathering powders I picked up at Lenton in a hungover haze http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/pdf/weathering-powders.pdf .  The Chaos symbol was surprisingly easy once I summoned up the courage to go for it - expect more of these in the future!!

The end result is below.  I would hope you would agree with me, that this will grace the battlefield a lot more than in its previous condition.  2 more Rhinos and a LR to go. 

I advise you all to challenge yourself to a new technique.  We are all very good at our own little bits, whether it be conversions, scultping, basing or great paint jobs.  Try something different for that buzz!

SotR - Trial Figure

Right I have completed a trial figure for my Nippon Force for Secrets and would welcome your views.  I look at it and like it, walk away and look again and hate it.

What do you think?

Project Hush

It's all been very quiet from the Silver Fox lately so here I am to put things right between us.
Pre-Christmas I spent a lot of time painting up my Shrike led army for our GoG Decemberation; they won 3 (turn 5 ending games are great), drew 1 and lost 1 so a damn fine return. I'll sort out a proper blog of the Peregrine Knights at a future date.
When I completed that I was trying to work out which army to do next and with an event sometime early 2010 I thought I'd count up the models I had unpainted to see what army was nearest completion. Once I crossed the 500 unpainted infantry figures during the count I kind of gave up!!
I needed a new plan...
One of things that various GoGs have tried to do in the past is build an army in secret; usually this doesn't work cos we're not very good at keeping secrets: always wanting to show off our latest creation (and why not - this is a show and tell kind of hobby). But I decided I really did want to do a secret army.
Back through the mounds of unpainted I went until I found stuff from 4 or 5 years ago that I'd purchased with a mind to building an army one day. An inventory count found that I had the troops, a HQ, couple of elites and 3 heavies already sorted: all I needed was a second HQ and some transports for the troops. So was born my Project Hush.
So who are they? Speculation is rife amongst the GoG Community and bets have been placed on all the armies showing in the attached pictures... well maybe all of them.
Clues?
At 1800 points there are 12 Kill Points.
Are they in one of the pictures scattered through this post? Well that would be telling now wouldn't it!?
I did take a picture of one of the HQ guys in his blister:
How is Project Hush coming along? All troops have been painted and are just waiting on the wash coats along with 1 HQ. 5 big things have been built this weekend and base coated.

Deutschland, Deutschland,la,la,la,!

Here as promised is the next batch of figures toward my German PZ Grenadier army for Flames of War. The basing has been completed now with the Silflor tufts and Hobby clumping foliage.
Great stuff, this time I have used the sring colour, rather than summer.

I have used branches and twigs cut from the garden and stuck these in with superglue, then grouted around them, moulding in tree roots for

effect.

I hope you like them, I will be mving on to the Machine Gun platoon next.

I do have Hanomags for all these, if I am honest I am a little scared that the camouflage will just look....well! Painted on...if you know what I mean. I am going to dig my spray gun out, which I have never used and then experiment a little before diving in. They're all undercoated and washed, I just need to get the red/brown and the green sprayed on!

TTFN

BFG

Flames of War movement.

Thanks to Varistat man, I am back on to achieving my GoG army target for 2010, this will be a 2K pts force for the German Wehrmacht, late war.







He popped over on Thursday of this week and gave me a run out with them against his Russian force, which is very, very scary. The battalions are absolutely huuuuge! 16+ stands in each. And he still managed to get 4 Katyushas and two platoons of mixed T34-76's and T34-85's......cripes D.M!
One of the best units I have found to be the anti tank guns, particularly the PAK 40. This little baby has better anti-tank than the tanks carrying the same gun, it can dig in, which guns like the '88 can't and has bulletproof cover, with footproint of 32" it's a must.
These 4 guns were put together and painted in an afternoon, I based them using tile grit then painted this, I had also stuck some larger stones to the base prior to the grit.
Once painted they were highlighted. I then ventured to adding "tufts" Silflor in this case. I also added some clumpage foliage, from any railway hobby store and added some sprigs from an old Warhammer pre-painted and flocked hedge. (This has lasted me years, I still have a load of it left as well.)

I really wanted to show the before and after with these photos, my camera isn't the best unfortunately, so Ihave done what I can with these.

I love the finished effect, the combined terrain on the bases just lends loads to the figures themselves.

Hope you like them, next will be the Panzergrenadiers.

TTFN

BFG.

A brand new bullet magnet!

New Tyranid codex = New Nid Gribblies!!

Huzzah!

I am loving the new codex. It has lots of new interesting bit and bobs, seems to have fallen in well with the USRs and presents a range of choices that you have to model yourself!

Brilliant!

One of teh 'Ooooh shiny' units that grabbed my attention was the Tervigon. It will make the capture bases scenerio particulary difficult if it sits on the objective 'pooing' out little gribblies. Oh Yeah - Thats why I want one!

Quick job really - a banana shape of tin foil coated in Supersculpy and before I dried it in the oven I pressed the Carnifex spares into the soft clay after I'd worked out where I wanted them. This meant that after the banana shape had been fired in the oven for 15 minutes, the plastic parts could be quickly glue-gunned back in place. Obviously I didn't put the plastic in the oven!

After that it was just a case of adding detail with green stuff or making small separate pieces from Supersculpy and gluing them on after they were fired in the oven.

Easy eh?

Clash of the Eldar and Imperials

Game on last night, 2,000 pts a piece saw an alliance of Imperial Guard and a Shrike like marine army (Varistat and The Silverfox) take on an Eldar army (Eddie Artillery and The BFG).

The mission was Dawn of War and Annihilation, the Imperials decided to go first and the Eldar decided to leave everything in reserve.

The Eldar raced on to the board on turn 1, here is a close up of the battle line with a refused left flank being the order of the day. We could see the Imperial lines arrayed in front of us, with the Vendetta on their right flank and a Leman Russ on their right, we agreed that the whole army going for their right would mean that some of their fire power might be out of range. As it turned out, the only thing out of range was their lasguns. The Wave Serpent carrying our Howling Banshees raced forward and took some heavy 4 shots at the Vendetta, this caused a Stunned result on the glance table, great we thought, that will be out for turn two! The rest of the Eldar forces tried in vain to penetrate the Landraider carrying 6 assault terminators and a Chaplain in Terminator armour, well we had to stop that right?

On our far right we had a lone unit of Pathfinders, which sprinted into cover, a 2+ cover save would ensure a good deal of winkling needed to get them out!

Turn 2, we all agreed was pretty much a non event for both sides, lots of missing and wailing and gnashing of teeth, none of the reserves turned up...the only thing that happened was the Avatar taking a wound from a Lascannon. Oh ans the fact that the Silverback called for an update and reiably informed us that the Vendetta had "extra armour" so the stun became a shaken! :-(

Turn 3, now this was a different kettle of rippers!! All the Imperial reserves and ours turned up! Shrike and his assault marines moved on to our left flank, eyeing up the Striking Scorpions and Eldrad....Sly Marbo appeared in the building in front of the Falcon and Dire Avengers, just as they had dismounted from it the turn before, he threw his demolition charge, which scattered a mighty 5" on to the poor assault marines with Shrike, killing 3 of them....ouch! So at this point the Guard had killed more Imperials than we had.

The Avatar took another 2 wounds and the Wraithlord was destroyed by a hail of Lascannon fore and the battle cannon of the Leman Russ Battle Tank. Ooh I almost forgot the chimera mounted vets that roared forward, de-bussed and opened up with some real nasty rapid fire!!! No overheats and 2 dead pathfinders later, they broke and fled the table!!

Sheesh, not looking good! The Termies assaulted the Guardians in our deployment zone from their Landraider and wiped them out!! Followed by our deep striking Spiders gunning 1 of them down in turn! That's okay we doomed them and we'll get the Avatar to exact vengeance....The falcon was destroyed as well and all the shots that the avengers put in to Marbo were saved by the cover, assault led to the avengers losing the combat and just hanging on!

Shrike leapt ino the Scorpions, which were in cover, Eldrad waded in with them and the result was a win to the Scorpions with only Shrike and a lone marine left! Well something was looking up, our wraithguard could toast the Termies before the Avatar got into them as well...... The Assault marine finally went down to Eldrad and the remaining Scorpions, however they did take four of the little green arachnids with them!

This turn also saw the poor wraithguard roll a wraithsight failure of a 1, leaving them flat footed in front of the Termies while the wave serpent carrying the Banshees got immobilised! That's okay the Avatar would deal with the Termies.....bloody invulnerable saves again! Ours didn't work though...sadly!

Turn 4 the Termies assaulted the poor inert Wraithguard and wiped them out, then swept on toward the Scorpions with Eldrad! The spiders suffered a deluge of fire and got all wiped out bar the exarch! Marbo drew the ongoing combat in both rounds! The scorpions and Eldrad assaulted the Termies and lost the combat, poor Eldrad rolling double 1 for wounds! With hind sight I think it might not have ma

ttered as they were making a lot of those 3+ inv saves....damn those storm shields!! the termies killed everyone except Eldrad! Our Falcon was also destroyed by one of the staunch guardsmen manning a Lascannon....it's not looking good!

Turn 5 Marbo finally succumbed to numbers, the Spider Exarch was sniped by some vets that had done the Pathfinders! and Eldrad succumbed to the storm shield thunder hammer combo!
Our only last ditch effort was the Dire Avengers pouring a "Bladestorm" into a platoon of Guardsmen, killing 3 however they held fast!

I'd love to say honours even but 8-4 on kill points doesn't cut it! Good win to the Imperials...well done Varistat and The Silverfox, commiserations to the BFG and Eddie Artillery.

Great game and a real, real laugh!